Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) debuted in the stock market last Friday and in two trading days, it added roughly $800 billion in market cap. Retail traders were a major force behind it, flooding options desks and lighting up message boards within minutes of the open.
- SPCX stock is up. See the chart and price action here.
‘Your Mistake Is Trying To Understand SPCX’
Retail investors are sharing their views, SpaceX predictions and investment strategies on Reddit Inc. (NYSE:RDDT).
“Your mistake is trying to understand SPCX,” one user wrote in a thread that has since become a minor manifesto for how retail traders are approaching the stock. “Just like people trying to understand Tesla lol,” another user responded.
‘No One Cares About Valuation’
The Tesla parallel runs deep here. Retail buyers watched Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) trade at multiples that made no conventional sense for years — and many of them made fortunes not because they modeled the fundamentals, but because they understood the psychology.
It looks like they are applying the same logic to SpaceX.
“No one cares about valuation when there are always people looking to speculate,” one commenter wrote.
“Tesla has been trading flat, so people will start pouring money into SpaceX. It’s not a long-term stock, just short-term speculation. Good PR is all you need.”
The underlying fundamental case is, at minimum, complicated.
Morningstar pegged SpaceX’s discounted cash flow value at $780 billion — less than half its IPO valuation of $1.77 trillion.
‘None of That Matters, Get In or Miss Out’
One Reddit commenter went further with a pointed challenge: “Ask yourself why 60% of the world has slow internet and then ask if they can pay for Starlink.”
It’s a fair question. Analysts at Payload Space project Starlink will account for roughly 79% of SpaceX’s total 2026 revenue.
A company trading near $2 trillion is therefore largely a bet on whether a satellite internet service can penetrate markets that may lack the income to sustain it.
Reddit isn’t ignoring that, but it is pricing it differently.
“Lol no one is buying SPCX on fundamentals,” another commenter wrote. “You’re either fundamentally lying to yourself or fundamentally bad at maths.”
The bears got a similar reception. “You bears keep talking about the fundamentals as if they matter at all,” wrote one bull. “None of that matters, get in, or miss out.”
Whether that’s wisdom or recklessness depends, in part, on the time horizon — and on whether Elon Musk‘s next headline arrives before that trader's stop-loss does.
In the meantime, Defiance ETFs launched the Defiance Daily Target 2X Long SpaceX ETF (BATS:SPCU) — a 2x leveraged daily SPCX product — on Monday.
Wall Street, it turns out, is happy to sell the vibes right alongside retail.
SPCX Stock Price Activity: SpaceX stock was up 10.70% at $213.09 at the time of publication Tuesday, according to Benzinga Pro.
Photo: Thrive Studios ID / Shutterstock
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